Ensure Your PR Campaign Makes The Right Noise

At Holyrood Partnership, we always ensure our PR campaigns have a voice

Today’s 24-hour news culture – and the non-stop whirlwind of social media – means there is a lot of competition for any business or organisation that wants to cut through the noise and have their story told.

That challenge is all the more tougher when it comes to not just fighting to get your media release or content used – but to ensure your campaign or lobbying message is heard.

It’s a common issue that hits our Edinburgh PR agency. More often than not, we’ll hear: “How do we get good PR to influence change for our sector?” Or “How do we get creative PR to help our campaign to become successful?”

But rather than just say we do this, we can demonstrate that we can walk-the-walk – as we did for a school piping competition, creating 19 million chances to share their messages, leading to record signups (Read on to find out more)

BEHIND THE BLING – Our PR agency has won a string of Gold and Silver PR awards for our campaigns. Behind the Bling explains what that mean for real businesses like yours – such as measurable results, including more sales or more website traffic.

Our work for the Scottish Schools Pipe Band Championships (SSPBC) saw us tasked not only with raising awareness of the competition itself, but in striking a chord on a much deeper note – to encourage schools to include piping and drumming tuition on their curriculum.

So how did we go about putting this message across?

The all-important end game of your PR campaign is to deliver the results you want. We start by agreeing clear objectives and realistic goals. That is key in breaking down any seemingly difficult project into manageable elements.

We can say this with confidence as we’ve won multiple PR awards for the successes we’ve delivered for clients – just this week we picked up a covered Gold Award for Best Community Relations in the UK-wide PRmoments Awards.

When the SSPBC team approached Holyrood PR, we drilled them down to get at nub of what was their key objective. In simple terms, the challenge wasn’t just raise the profile of the SSPBC and ensure as many schools as possible entered, it was more profound than that; more significant even.

We knew that it was our job to make the public realise that Scotland is in danger of seeing its beloved national instrument become extinct if we aren’t careful.

That meant we had to direct all our focus on encouraging parents, parent councils, head-teachers and their staff, local education authorities, well-resourced private schools and the Scottish Government to play their part – financial and otherwise – in helping Scotland retain its status and position as the world’s traditional piping centre.

From there, our next task is to create powerful and cogent key messages that underpin the whole campaign – ensuring they are measured and evaluated. We always work from the standpoint that PR should be about outcomes, not outputs. We see no value in simply telling a client we’ll produce two media releases a month – if they simply go nowhere and have no impact.

With objective and key messages in place, we set out a campaign that had two clear strands to generate coverage to highlight the SSPBC objectives: To profile awareness of the success of the Championships under the theme, ’Every School Needs a Pipe Band’; and to identify influential people and opportunities to showcase the threat of Scotland’s pipes and drums tradition with particular focus on using the high profile of Scotland’s Hogmanay celebrations.

And boy, did we get a reaction …

Our successful PR delivered around 60 items of coverage (including national media and TV) to date – reaching an astounding potential audience of more than 19 million.

Of most importance, more than 80% of the coverage featured at least two of our key messages – with one recording a complete 100% rating.

That means the message of the need to safeguard piping in Scottish schools has reached a vast audience – allowing the SSPBC to continue their pressure to influence change with a solid and powerful body of evidence and support

Championship convenor David Johnston is fully aware of the value of Holyrood PR’s success:

“We had a total of 111 schools represented at the Championships – which is quite remarkable.

“I did look round a couple of times as the competition was in full swing and wonder how on earth we managed to create such a big event from nothing?

“What I do know is that the PR Holyrood PR have created for us has made a large contribution to the outcome.”

To finish up …

You may be thinking, well, now that the competition is over, what more do Holyrood PR need to do?

Never a company to carry out a half hearted PR campaign, we are working on a detailed roll out to the local media to highlight the lucky competition winners. All of which means, yet more coverage – and solid lobbying material – to come for the SSPBC.

Do you want your business to be making a noise in the media

We hope this blog has given you a better insight into why PR is beneficial for your business and how it can help increase your bottom line.

But if you still have a few questions you would like answered, don’t hesitate to contact us on 0131 561 2244 or fill in the contact form below and we will get right back to you.

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Private: Vickie Henry

Vickie Henry is a part of the expert PR team at the award-winning Holyrood Partnership, public relations agency in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The PR agency works with businesses across Scotland.
As well as providing media relations, crisis communications, Holyrood Partnership also offers PR photography, affordable video for businesses, social media services and strategic content delivery for businesses.